What should we ask about Tiny Homes - Part 3

The final part in a series looking at issues in the Tiny House movement. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

After exploring the issues of classism and financial accessibility as well as the difference between a small home and a Tiny Home, in this final chapter in the series, we will take a look at accessibility. 

Are Tiny Homes really for all?

Of course on this blog I will consider accessibility, how could I not? On first appearances, Tiny Homes may be a good accessible alternative and for some they certainly are: the small space puts everything close to hand and the home owner doesn’t need to worry about maintaining and looking after a large residence. Additionally the portable nature of the traditional Tiny Home means that they can be located in a place that is convenient and beneficial to the owner – close to relatives or amenities for example, or even in the back garden of a relative. We are also used to the concept of disabled people or those with particular adaptations living in smaller units - whether for their own benefit or somebody else’s – as in the case of retirement units and sheltered accommodation so the idea of “putting” disabled people in affordable Tiny Homes may not be that alien. The reality however is that Tiny Homes are often far from accessible and worse, the Tiny Home Movement can have a latent thread of disableism running through it’s rhetoric.

Though not at the core of it, the Tiny House Movement is very much about aspirational lifestyle and reflects aspects of health and well-being trends which can includes things such as “healthy” eating, being active and the firm belief (divorced from any spiritual roots) that yoga can cure all. A common feature of Tiny Homes is that the sleeping area is in an elevated loft space that must be accessed by some step or ladder arrangement. This itself presents an obvious accessibility hurdle but this is further exaggerated by those living in tiny homes who often talk of it as a way of keeping fit or staying lithe into old age. As is common in many other areas of our society the idea that we may become ill or disabled at any point is one people simply don’t contemplate. There are, thankfully, an increasing number of designs which have ground level beds or beds that fold or slide out of craftily hidden nooks. Certainly the opportunity for customisation and bespoke building does mean that there is room for innovation and the opportunity for accessible small space beds, but it isn’t currently the norm.

Pauline Sugarman's clever design with a slide away bed.

When pulled out the bed blocks access to other features

That need for space saving and clever storage is wonderful and from a design point of view something I love. However in terms of accessibility it’s not always great. While from a design point of view I love beds which magically appear out from under a sofa or fold down from a wall, the reality is that you can only use the space for one thing at a time: it is either bedroom or living room (or office or whatever the designated usage is). If you want to move from the bedroom to a sitting room or a craft space you have to get out of bed, tidy all your bedding away and physically move the bed to access your other space. The reverse may be even more difficult: imagine being somebody with a chronic illness who needs to lie down after being sat working for a short while. They need to tidy their office/craft/leisure activity away safely and securely, possibly move a piece of furniture or two and then assemble/reveal/lower the bed and adjust or add bedding before being able to get into it. That’s an awful lot to ask of somebody with limited capability. 

From my own point of view there would be a couple of unexpected challenges to living in a Tiny House, and they are both to do with laundry. Many Tiny Houses are designed without space for a washing machine or any drying space. For many this is a reasonable decision - they have access to laundry facilities on their parking site or are able to take their laundry to a launderette (or in one case were able and content to wash their clothes in a pot over an open fire outside). This is absolutely fine if it is something you can do. But it's not something I can do, I need a washing machine in easy reach and I need the space to be able to dry things or an efficient washer-dryer combo that can operate off of whatever electrical power supply I have. Additionally though, I need a lot of clothes. No this isn't just me justifying owning a lot of clothes it's actually a great adaptation for disabled people. If you don't have the energy to do a load of laundry you still need to have clean clothes to wear. So you need enough options to have stuff waiting to be washed and ready to wear. But that takes up space and means the common Tiny House lifestyle hack of downsizing a wardrobe or utilising a "capsule wardrobe" just isn't feasible. With these extra space needs a Tiny House may just not suite some disabled people. 

Think also of getting in to a Tiny Home – most are raised on trailers or on a temporary foundation and require a set of steps to get in to. Obviously there is an accessibility issue right away. Foldable stowable or temporary ramps do of course exist and there are a smattering of ramped homes out there, even some with pneumatic platforms, but they come at a premium price and are difficult design elements to add. We don’t just have to consider their suitability for use but also how durable they are, how much space they take up and if they can easily be removed or stowed for travel (or to comply with “temporary dwelling” regulations). How inclusive are Tiny Houses when people simply can’t get into them and how revolutionary is that compared to the standard and inaccessible housing model. Once inside how do you move around. Small spaces are difficult for people with wheelchairs (manual or electric) as well as for those with crutches or canes and visibility issues – how do you navigate your own tiny home. The plus side of course is that you don’t have to go very far to get to anything and it would be plausible to fit in easy to reach grab rails throughout!

Not strictly a Tiny House this "outbuilding" features a rare ramp. Bungalito by John Hindman

We need more creativity

It’s not that some solutions don’t exist and of course not all disabilities and their needs are the same, but the prevailing thinking in Tiny Home design isn’t one that has yet embraces accessibility needs or the full potential of bespoke home design.

And that really is at the crux of the issues I see in the Tiny Homes movement. We have something that could potentially be revolutionary in a number of ways but, as long as the prevailing thinking stays influenced by current housing standards and trends, it will never reach it’s potential. In order to actually serve as a revolutionary, accessible and truly inclusive form of housing it has to break free of the systemic forms of oppression and discrimination that foster our current housing inequality.

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What should we ask about tiny homes - Part 2

Part 2 of 3 in a series looking at issues in the Tiny House movement. You can read Part 1 here.

Last week we looked at how the cost of Tiny Houses wasn't always as low as you'd think and how it didn't necessarily break the traditional mould of housing. This week we are going to take that a step further as we consider what makes a Tiny Home a Tiny Home. 

Tiny or merely small

look at the cost of Tiny Homes in terms of people who already live in low cost and often small accommodation, be it rented or owned. Why is it that Tiny Homes are celebrated, given YouTube channels and the prestige of capitalisation whilst simply living in a small home is not. Small houses are far from being unusual with a two bedroom terrace being around 164m^2 or less and the average apartment or flat being smaller still. Though not common in the UK, trailer homes and trailer parks are a ubiquitous feature of the US housing market and landscape. Trailers, similar to a static caravan for those in the UK, are around 148.5m^2 so clearly a small living space.

Photo taken from RightMove.co.uk. image shows a small but tidy kitchen viewed from the doorway. It is not much wider than the doorway.

Certainly there is no glamour in the UK to living in a small house, and certainly not when you are renting a back-to-back or a council flat in an impoverished area. Similarly, trailers and trailer parks in the US garner a lot of stigma, neatly summed up in the common insult “trailer trash” - people who dwell in trailers are often stereotyped as being rough, common and of low intelligence. Nothing like the praise, prestige and compliments given to those who live in a tiny home. Those who live in a house with a kitchen so small you can’t open a cupboard and the fridge at the same time (or indeed can’t even fit the fridge in the kitchen) tend to “make do” to struggle and to put up with these difficult spaces, where as those with Tiny House kitchens often marvel at the ingenuity, how little space they actually need and the easiness with which they can use the space. 

Tiny House living is often described in terms of comfort, ease, ingenuity and enjoyment of “the simple life”¹, concepts which may not be familiar to those of us who live or who have lived in something which is simply considered “a small house”. Part of this difference in attitude is due to how Tiny Houses come to exist and the place they hold in our housing culture. Tiny Houses are deliberate and considered. They are self build projects wither entirely built by the people living in them or with a lot of input from the owners to the designers and manufacturers. Like other self build projects they are bespoke, tailored to the owners needs and can involve non-standard features that make use easier. They are also intentional in terms of a person’s desire to live in a Tiny House – they have chosen to downsize or live “more simply” or have lifestyles and needs that work with a Tiny Home. Compare this to a family or person who is forced into a small home due to economic and sociopolitical circumstances and may not have a lifestyle or personality that is well adapted to a small and ill-fitting space. It is far easier to live in a small space that meets your specific needs than it is attempting to adapt your needs to an existing and fixed design – especially when that design may have come about over a century earlier and without any idea what the needs of a 2019 family may be.

Photo shows a compact bespoke kitchen made out of natural wood with curved countertops. It has several windows and easy access. photo CCC Lindahouse

 

This is closely tied to the financial issues described earlier and therefore to issues of classism and social discrimination based on income, and in some cases to racism. The average Tiny Home dweller is not the same as the average person who lives in a merely small home. Exact figures on these demographics are very difficult to come by, it’s simply not something that is documented and there is no consensus on exactly what a small home is. In the US the demographics and tradition of trailer park residents suggest lower income people, those who would traditionally be considered lower or working class and, due to historic and systemic racial discrimination and town planning² regulation, are likely to be of minority ethnicities³.

When espousing the right of people to be able to build and own their own homes, or to have access to not just affordable housing but also housing that is fit for purpose we need to be aware of who is able to access these new innovations and do our best to try and breakdown and overcome existing systemic persecution of those groups who have not been afforded the luxury of such housing including those on a low income and those from BAME communities. Part of this involves examining our existing attitudes toward those in small and low cost housing and how that compares to attitudes to Tiny Houses as well as doing what we can to ensure that our enthusiasm for Tiny Homes does not exclude the already excluded and perpetuate inequality.

Ready for the next instalment: read Part 3 here

1 for issues relating to the privilege of minimalism please refer to the Pratchet quote from Part 1 and consider how it is easy to get rid of possessions when you know you can afford to buy a new one should you need it).

2This excellent history of Suburbia from McMansion Hell blogger Kate Wagner gives some insight into mid century town planning in the US https://mcmansionhell.com/post/154653904191/a-pictorial-history-of-suburbia

3This wikipedia article on White Flight may shed some light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Government-aided_white_flight

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What should we ask about Tiny Homes - Part 1

Recently I’ve become somewhat obsessed by Tiny Homes and the Tiny Homes Movement and it’s got me thinking over some issues and asking a few questions.

First of all what are Tiny Homes and how is it a movement?

Tiny homes are exactly what they sound like, very small compact homes often under 37m^2 and generally made as temporary buildings or to be mobile.

The definition often includes converted vans and vehicles such as buses but crucially doesn’t include traditional commercial RVs, camper vans or caravans. The reason for that distinction is something I’ll get into later.

The Tiny House Movement is a term for the online and often international communities created to talk about and share ideas relating to tiny homes. There isn’t one firm fixed ethos or manifesto but shared goals and beliefs usually include some take on minimising footprint, being eco-friendly, downsizing, minimalism, and being rent or mortgage free as well as personal freedom. However the motivations for people deciding to live in a tiny home are as varied as the people who chose to do it. From retirees to hippies, young professionals to families, travellers (please note the lower case t here) to people looking to settle down: many people are drawn to the idea of tiny house living.

There are a multitude of websites forums, Facebook groups and YouTube videos dedicated to exploring the tiny home movement and tiny homes themselves. So if you would like to fall down that particular wormhole you won’t have to look hard.

There are many things I enjoy about tiny houses and the movement, I wouldn’t have fallen down the rabbit hole otherwise. The two big appeals for me are firstly that there is a lot of opportunity for being environmentally friendly and conscious and secondly that it provides an option outside of the standard model of the capitalist housing and rental economy. Additionally the opportunity for highly personalised customised spaces is very appealing: who doesn’t want to live in a bespoke crafted house?

Image shows a small home on a trailer clad in grey panels. It has a teal green door and wooden set of external steps. From Reeds Road Home Design

The Housing Ladder Alternative

It’s the alternative to the prevailing housing market aspect that I want to tackle first, though. 

Undeniably for many people, the majority I would say in fact including those who are home owners, the current model for housing in the UK and other Western capitalist countries is difficult, expensive, and not fit for purpose. We devote a huge portion of our earnings to either paying a mortgage or rent. The cost of housing has shot up over the decades making living in some areas only accessible to the very wealthy unless you are willing to live in cramped squalor. Though they are slowly and not without a fight being improved, laws surrounding rental accommodation have long been in the favour of the landlords leaving renters in often precarious living situations and dealing with high rent and often very poor housing including damp, mould, structural safety issues, fire hazards and poor security. Though renting is seen as the norm and a perfectly reasonable living option in many countries, in the UK at least it is often treated as inferior to home ownership. Home ownership is seen as the goal and a sign of being a “responsible adult” however the cost of buying is now so high that many younger people (and for this article that’s pretty much anybody under 35) are unable to get onto the housing ladder without incurring significant debt or being fortunate enough to use equity from their parent’s home.

When finding somewhere safe comfortable, practical and above all affordable to live is so difficult it is no surprise that people start turning to alternatives and for them Tiny Homes may be the ideal solution. Now we get to the crux of the issue: Tiny Homes as a solution to high rents and a hostile housing market. But why is that a problem? Surely that’s to be celebrated and encouraged. I see it as only short term solution to a much larger problem and one that allows people to think we are addressing the housing crisis when all we are doing is affixing a sticking plaster.

Tiny houses are undoubtedly a good solution for individuals but they are not a solution to overcrowding and high costs of living. Tiny living spaces have been a feature of capitalist housing for centuries and while they do undoubtedly provide shelter for those in need (and who can pay) they don’t bring about any end to a hostile housing environment. Tiny Houses have the advantage that they are individually owned and therefore not contributing to (or minimally at least) the housing market. The issue of course is in this individuality that, with the exception of those who live in planned communities, the benefit of this new way of living is restricted to a few and doesn’t lead to systemic change. If anything it can serve to uphold the current system as those in power are able to point to those who “survive” in such tiny dwellings whilst continuing to pay rent or fees to management companies. It’s worth noting that blame for this shouldn’t be placed on the individual tenants who are simply doing the best they can.

It could be argued that those turning to Tiny Houses are undermining the traditional housing market, but it simply isn’t being done on a scale that has any real impact on the status quo. Instead of it being a solution that benefits many, it is the preserve of a few.

This leads nicely into my next point. As I said, Tiny Home owners often cite reducing housing costs or getting out of expensive housing markets as core motivations, and it’s indeed true that Tiny House living is often significantly cheaper than even small homes in the traditional housing market. However that doesn’t necessarily make them affordable. Some of you may be familiar with the “Sam Vimes “Boot” Theory of Economics” from author Terry Pratchett.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

In the Tiny House movement it’s not to say that Tiny House owners are necessarily rich or wealthy, but like the person who can afford to pay for the good fifty dollar boots and have them last a lifetime, the Tiny Home owner has the money to invest in their new low cost living arrangement.

There are of course exceptions, but for the most part, Tiny Homes require you to be rich in either time or money, if not both. While £16,000 may be a tiny amount to pay to own your own home outright, it’s still a substantial amount of money for a person to have. Those built for that little often also rely on the ability of the home owner to dedicate time and effort to do much of the work themselves – a fully built Tiny House will cost upwards from £25000 in the UK. Less than a mortgage deposit perhaps but still not a small amount and one that many won’t have sitting in their banks. 

Additionally, whether going self built or pre-fab you need to have somewhere to live while it’s being made and before it’s on site, costing you rent or mortgage payments. Essentially you have to be able to afford standard housing before you can go Tiny. Then there are costs like having a suitable vehicle to tow with if you go for a mobile model, or the cost of transport for larger or shipping container style homes. You also need to consider location. You may be lucky and have access to rent free land but for most there will be some sort of land purchase or rental cost or weekly hire rates. 

Now think about the type of people who would really benefit from Tiny Houses: those who are low income and struggle with the traditional housing market: single parents, people who are unemployed, those who are currently homeless, disabled people and other low income groups. These are the people who are most negatively impacted by the high cost of living in many areas and who would benefit from genuine alternatives to the traditional housing market. They are also the same people who are least likely to be able to afford the initial costs of a Tiny House. If they don’t already have savings they may be able to get a loan, but only if a bank approves them and if they have a steady income that can take on the repayments. Paying back a loan while also paying for accommodation while your house is being built might be too steep for many and those who work full time just to afford that probably can’t afford the time off needed to self build, or they have other limitations such as disability or carer duties to restrict their ability to self build.

When these factors are considered we can see that while Tiny Homes are a low cost housing solution they are not necessarily affordable or accessible to those who are struggling with the traditional housing market.

This is Part One in a series of three on Tiny Homes. Read Part Two here. 

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The Greggs' Effect

Veganism, classism and disableism

I’m pretty sure everybody in the UK and a fair few people outside it will have learned that Greggs – a low cost bakery chain – released a vegan sausage roll in early 2019. It caused much consternation amongst some quarters, most noticeably those who look up to the conservative “political pundit” and former game-show-host Piers Morgan. Piers’ over-the-top and toddler likerejection of the vegan sausage roll was a rallying cry for those who hate veganism generally, people who simply couldn’t understand why vegans might want a budget bakery item. Sadly this criticism and disbelief wasn’t just limited to those of a more socially conservative bent. There was also a surprising amount of wailing from people within the vegan community. It’s not healthy enough? Why would you want a meat replacement? If you’re vegan why are you buying from Gregg’s at all.

In some ways this second wave of criticism was actually more frustrating. After all anybody who doesn’t belong to the cis-male, white, straight, “British” group is pretty used to at some point coming in the firing line of Morgan and his brethren. That’s sadly the way of the world: stray from the path of what “they” have defined as “normal” and you will be criticised (or downright discriminated against). But when you are part of a counter-culture or alternative lifestyle group, you generally expect a certain amount of solidarity from within, even accounting for differing opinions and personalities. So a wave of criticism from your own “side” especially when you are also being attacked from other quarters can really knock the wind out of your sails.

photo from wikimedia image shows the store front of a Greggs Bakery. It has a blue and white sign with an orange square logo)

So now it’s almost 6 months later, and the financial news is reporting that Greggs is reporting soaring profits and steady gains in the stock market almost entirely attributed to increased sales of and because of the vegan sausage roll. With that success, Greggs is talking about expanding their vegan range, which for me is only a good thing. But with that comes controversy. Remember that criticism from other vegans I talked about only two paragraphs ago? Right that becomes an issue. You see there is a perception from non-vegans that veganism should be “healthy”, and this is a perception that is held up in some quarters of the vegan community. Vegan food should be “healthy” natural, full of vegetables, whole grains and other nutritionally superior goodies. Additionally we shouldn’t want to be mimicking meat because this is somehow ethically unsound and requires more of those pesky “unnatural” processed foods. These are the sorts of people making suggestions for new Greggs products that include lots of different vegetables and interesting grains, less fats and less delicious golden pastry.

But here’s the thing – nobody thinks that Greggs is or ever has been a bastion of healthy lifestyle. Nobody, vegan or otherwise, goes to Greggs expecting a nutritionally balanced, “healthy”, whole foods, natural lunch. You go to Greggs because you are hungry and it’s there and sometimes a baked good is exactly what you fancy. And that’s entirely ok.

Initially this debate may look fairly inconsequential and not something worth spending much time on. If one group doesn’t like fake meat and another does what’s the problem? The problem is that this actually becomes an argument about disablism, classism and food snobbery within veganism and other lifestyle choices.

So let me tell you about an experience I had just today. For context, I have been to Greggs only once since the introduction of the vegan sausage roll and I wasn’t a frequent visitor before that. Recently my CFS/ME has been worse than usual and I’ve been having a higher number of high fatigue days. I’m finding it more difficult to balance out exertion and rest as needed. So on this particular Thursday I had been to get my hair done. Due to the timing of the appointment, I hadn’t had a proper lunch though I had had a snack. My mid afternoon I was very hungry and my bloodsugar was low. I was also starting to struggle with fatigue. Due to that difficulty I wasn’t thinking straight and instead of getting a taxi from the place literally next door to my hairdresser’s I decided to get a bus half way home and walk the rest. I was soon really exceptionally fatigued and struggling to walk much. I was shaking and walking with slower and slower steps. I was also very hungry. All I wanted to do was sleep and eat, preferably at the same time. I hadn’t budgeted for lunch out, after all I’d just spent money on getting my hair done and now had to be conservative with spending. Luckily for me my route took me past a small shopping centre. So now I had options. Supermarket, discount food store, chain cafe and Greggs. In reality due to my fatigue and my budget I didn’t actually have that many options at all. I did not have the energy to walk around a supermarket looking for individual easy to eat vegan items. That would probably end up costing around £5 too which is more than I wanted. Likewise with the discount food store – it may be discounted but what they have available is varied and it would take a lot of energy to search out and check labels. The cafe would be more expensive and I’d probably only be able to get a cookie. Greggs and their vegan sausage roll was looking like some sort of greasy baked good oasis.

I got my sausage roll (the very last one) and ate it in a very few bites leaning against the wall and in short order the signs of hypoglycemia subsided and I and a fraction more energy. I was only £1 down to boot. It only took a short rest against the wall (because all the benches were out in the rain) and I judged myself able to make it home on foot. Thank goodness it was downhill from there. Even then the last 100m were painfully slow and on getting home I still had to have a protein smoothie banana and then fall into a solid sleep for two hours.

photo author's own. image shows an agender person wearing glasses and a black hoodie. They have green and purple curly hair and are leaning against a wall holding a sausage roll in a Greggs paper bag to their mouth

But what’s the point of this not so thrilling look into the average day of somebody with ME? Well here goes. That slightly greasy, warm, flaky pastry encases lump of processed fake meat was exactly what I needed right then. Regardless of what I actually like the taste of what I needed was something simple, that I could eat right then and there with one hand, that had protein fat and carbs, that required little thinking, no checking of ingredients and of course was cheap.

Don’t get me wrong I love good food. I love home-made-from-scratch food. I love piles of vegetables and interesting ingredients. I am the sort of person who makes asparagus and cucumber beurre blanc with pasta as “an easy simple meal”. I can frequently be found shoving handfuls of fruit into my face. I love “healthy” “natural” food. But what I also need is food I can eat and food I can afford. 

An awful lot of vegan food that goes down the healthy lifestyle route just doesn’t tick those boxes. When I am that exhausted or have brain fog issues I can’t be checking ingredients to make sure something non-vegan or something that sets of my IBS isn’t in there – and yes many common health foods are super incompatible with IBS, which is a common component of CFS/ME and EDS. I don’t have energy to stand dithering at a counter figuring out which superfood salad really hits the spot. I don’t have the energy to go around a supermarket looking for different items. Sometimes it’s because the things I need in order to be healthy are things over looked in so-called healthy food (and I promise not to derail into an entire other article about notions of “healthy” food) and that is that carbohydrates, some fats and protein, the big easy things, are really important to a person’s diet and are often especially important to somebody with a chronic health condition who just needs fuel. Vitamin B12 is essential to body function and something I need to be mindful of on a vegan diet. But it doesn’t matter how much B12 I get if I don’t get the required number of calories, grams of carbohydrate and protein into my body to just keep me upright.

On top of that I don’t have a lot of money. If I want to do things like get my hair dyed at a salon I budget for it carefully (including taxis when I remember them) and that means I can’t be spending a fortune on eating out every time I get hungry (and no I can’t carry packed lunches everywhere, that gets heavy and energy sapping fast).

Sometimes I just want easy tasty food that I don’t have to think too hard about and that I can afford.

Sometimes I just need easy tasty food that I don’t have to think too hard about and that I can afford.

I am not going to Greggs because I want nutritionally balanced fancy food. I am going there because it fills a particular niche in daytime food whether you are vegan or not. So for everybody suggesting that Greggs start doing a butternut squash and spinach pastie, whilst yes that does sound lovely, will you kindly shut up. Go and get that somewhere else. You can I assure you find that somewhere else. What I want is a vegan corned beef slice. Or a vegan cheese and onion roll (this is a flagrant lie, I’ve never liked cheese and onion rolls and onion triggers my IBS). Or a vegan steak bake. Now there’s choice. Things so simple the ingredients are in their name. Things so simple you can get it and a drink and have change out of a fiver.

You may be thinking “well if you are disabled and have such difficulty finding food then maybe you shouldn’t be vegan?” or even “Well if you haven’t got much money then you shouldn’t be fussy about your food?”.

I’m just going to give you a few moments to really think about what you are saying there.

Let me tell you how those things sound to me: when you say somebody who is disabled, chronically ill or poor shouldn’t be vegan you are telling me that somebody who is disabled, chronically ill or poor shouldn’t be allowed to have their own ethics, morals or beliefs. I don’t care if you agree with my beliefs or not, but I am very, very concerned that you would think that a person’s right to their own thoughts, their own beliefs and ethics should be governed by their physical ability or health and their financial status. Every single person in this country is by law guaranteed the right to have their own ethics and beliefs and to act on them as long as they don’t cause harm to anybody else. If my beliefs are that I don’t eat animal products then I should have the right to do so even if I am ill, disabled or poor. Because on top of that right to hold ethics there is also the human right that I or anybody else should not be discriminated against due to disability or socioeconomic status. If non-disabled people can choose to eat an animal free diet then why do you believe that somebody who is disabled does not have that right?

If you have the energy to get “higher quality” food or to look for something more nutritionally complete or with fresher ingredients. Great, you do that. And on my good days I’ll be right there with you enjoying some delicious delicious greens. But on my bad days if that’s all that’s on offer I won’t be by your side. I’ll be on the floor crying because my legs don’t move any more.

To insist that all vegan food should be healthy, natural and conform to a certain narrow view of what vegan food should look like is classist and disableist. To level that criticism at other vegans, to tell them they are “doing it wrong” or aren’t “proper vegans” or should be in some way ashamed for wanting a mass produced cheap baked good is classist and disableist and you need to stop. You eat what you want, and let me eat my dream vegan corned beef slice before I pass out.

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Me Vs My Disability

Many people who are disabled have to walk a fine line controlling other people’s perception of them: the line between looking vulnerable and not yourself and appearing “not disabled enough”.

The way our society treats disable people erases their identity and turns individuals into a single homogeneous being of “The Disabled”. We are stripped of what makes us us and instead represented by walking sticks blue badges wheelchair pictographs and infernal aluminium and grey plastic.

“You don’t look disabled!” and “But you don’t look sick!” are stock phrases that every disabled person will be tired of hearing. The phrase is usually offered one of two ways: disbelief and judgement or an attempt at a compliment.

When offered as a compliment it is to say “you don’t look how I think a disabled person looks” or “you don’t look pathetic or weak”. This is part of erasing our identity and assuming that all disabled and chronically ill people fit into a single mould. It also assumes that the goal and the ideal is for the person to not be disabled and so be successfully looking “not disabled” we are achieving success. It also ignores the fact that regardless of how we look we are still disabled, we have gone to great effort to look our best but that doesn’t mean we negate our disability.

When the phrases are said with animosity or judgement they fuel discrimination. The implication is usually that in claiming disability status, and especially in making use of any support or assistance, we are lying, faking or acting fraudulently. Again this comes from a place of not conforming to views of what a disabled person should look like or how they should act. It also ignores the fact that you are often only seeing disabled or chronically ill people on good days, not on the bad days or at times when their disability limits interaction: if a disabled person can’t every make it into a pub with poor accessibility some people may draw the conclusion that disabled people don’t go to the pub. That is to say, enjoying a pint with their friends doesn’t fit the picture of disability which has been created in their minds.

photograph showing a person from the waist up wearing dungarees and a black t-shirt, they have grey lipstick, glasses and green hair. They have tube bandages on both elbows. credit Chiara MacCall

The impact of this can be devastating from verbal and physical discrimination and abuse, an unwillingness to improve accessibility to place out of a belief that disabled people won’t use certain facilities, to privation when benefits aren’t awarded or long term health issues and even fatality if medical treatment is denied.

One of the often unspoken casualties of this attack on how disabled people should look and behave is the mental health and well-being of a disabled person. When you are reduced only to one aspect of your life, and that aspect is often difficult and unpleasant or comes with negative associations, it can wear away at a person’s sense of self, their confidence and self worth. Additionally being constantly questioned and doubted as to the validity of their experience can cause guilt, confusion, stress and paranoia. The mental health cost of the general public not really seeing disabled people as people is massive.

Photograph of a person from the waist down. They are seated and are wearing blue short dungarees over a black t-shirt. They have black skeleton print knee socks on, camo-print K-Tape on their left knee, tube grips on their elbows and support gloves on. Their hands resting on a walking stick. credit Chiara MacCall

However there is a balance to be struck. If we see only the individual and erase their disability, we may create more inequality by not addressing the access and care needs of disabled people. If we see only the disability we erase their identity along with any other characteristics and difficulties they may face (because a disabled person may also be a black person, a Muslim, gay, trans, poor or other minority characteristics).

I have writtenpreviously about being seen as a vulnerable adult. This continues to be an issue especially following a recent burglary that has left me very aware that I am to many people who see me a vulnerable person. To those who only see the disability I am an easy target (if their minds lead to nefarious activity any way). That’s a very difficult position to find yourself in. I don’t want to be viewed as nothing more than an equation that disabled = vulnerable yet I must face the fact that not only are there people who view me this way but that they aren’t entirely incorrect.

What could I do really if there was an intruder in my house, especially on a bad day where I was struggling with fatigue or pain. Could I fight back if attacked? Could I defend myself and my house. The answer is, probably no. Despite the fact that I have, prior to my disability, years of martial arts training is inconsequential. It doesn’t matter that for somebody with my health conditions I am relatively strong. The majority of time I am a vulnerable adult and I know that anybody seeing me in the street or, gods forbid watching me exit and enter my house with my walking stick, could conclude that I am an easy target.

Understandably this is a very difficult concept to deal with. Nobody likes to think of themselves as a target or feel unsafe in their own home. But worse than that it strips me of my identity and personality. It reduces me to that concept of disabled and nothing more.

photograph that is blurred showing motion. A person is walking away from the camera wearing a backpack and using their walking stick. Credit Chiara MacCall

But I am more than that. And I want non-disabled people to know that. I want non-disabled people to start to look beyond the sticks and chairs and hearing aids and to see real people and to understand that if somebody saying they are disabled even if you can’t see any obvious indicators, even if they don’t fit the traditional narrative of what disability looks like, that maybe they are disabled and maybe there is more to them than that disability. Being disabled does not erase my gender or my sexuality. It does not erase that I like heavy and eclectic music. It does not erase the fact that I love art and books and food. It doesn’t erase that I enjoy being active and singing and horses. It doesn’t erase my political opinions or activism.

photograph showing an arm stretching up toward the sky with a crane behind it. The arm is hyperextended and the elbow is at an unusal angle and covered by a tube bandage. The fingers are splayed wide. Credit Chiara MacCall

More than that those many things and more that make up who I am do not in any way make me less disabled, cure my disability, make me a liar, make me a faker, erase my disability or my experience as a disabled person.

That’s what the photographs illustrating this article are all about. They are a collaboration with documentary photographer Chiara MacCall who uses her lens to show who people really are and who has a great talent for showing what is beneath the surface of her subjects. I spent a day in London with Chiara being disabled and being me. We ate good food, talked politics and social justice, looked at art both in galleries and on the street and talked about what it was that made us who we are. I was not “born disabled”. I gained my disability in my late 20s. It has taken a long time for me to accept that this is a part of who I am, that it can be a part of who I am without erasing my personality, identity and the sum of the experiences I had had up until that point. Just as taking a dance class when I was 7 shaped who I am today, so did becoming disabled when I was 27.

My self identity does not invalidate my disability and my disability does not invalidate me.

Photograph showing a person wearing dungarees a black t-shirt, black skeleton print socks with various joint supports and a walking stick stood in front of a large piece of street art showing an orange skinned femme figure covered in flowers. cred Chiara MacCall

They're here for your honey. But why?

As we are well into Veganuary some of you may be really settling in to this new way of eating and living whilst other’s may be struggling a bit. It certainly doesn’t help when there are dozens of blog articles, memes and twitter posts out there bashing veganism and vegans. Most difficult are those that frame it as genuine concern or outrage that people being vegan may not be in line with somebody else’s ethics or values, and those that cite concerns about the perils of veganism.

One such common concern is that vegans are using specialist ingredients or replacement ingredients that are some how leading to an environmental or ethical catastrophe.

Occasionally within these scare stories are valid concerns and slivers of truth, or at least questions that need asking – why are people suddenly buying quinoa when most of us had never heard of it before now, and half of us still can’t pronounce it. Why are will looking at alternatives to sugar like agave? 

Take honey for example

A constant source or criticism is that by giving up honey vegans are somehow entirely responsible for the death of bees and consequently will be the cause of famine and a worldwide catastrophe. Now, without getting into exactly why there are a lot of problems with these arguments about honey and bees, or addressing why this has become the go to straw man argument against vegans, I have another question: why is replacing honey such a big deal at all? 

photo showing a large fluffy pancake on a plate with slices of red apple and drizzled maple syrup. photo author's own

Perhaps I am the odd one out here, but thinking back to my pre-vegan days, I just didn’t use that much honey. I liked honey and would have it occasionally, but it wasn’t a staple of my diet. I didn’t go through jars of it each week. Cutting honey from my diet was a trivial matter and required almost zero changes to my eating and purchasing habits. The tiny changes I did have to make were because honey is sometimes used as a commercial “natural sweetener as a replacement for refined sugar. This mostly comes up when I am buying muesli. It’s really not a big deal.

Perhaps other people use honey far more frequently, but I do struggle to see why honey, and replacing honey is so talked about. So I had a think and looked into it a little and I think I have found some answers.

Firstly, the rise in veganism over the past 5 years or so has mirrored the rise in “healthy lifestyle” or “lifestyle” blogging, especially on platforms like Instagram. Health and diet fads are nothing new and have been around for centuries. Associating them with aspirational lifestyles and “good living” isn’t new either. The language may have changed but the message is still the same: eat the “right” things and you too can be beautiful, happy and virtually immortal for little effort.

Sugar, meaning refined sugar, has been declared not “healthy” and to be cut out of our diets. Therefore if we want sweet treats, and don’t we all, we must replace the sugar with something else. In non-vegan cooking – as well as commercial products as noted above- the obvious choice is honey. It is so pleasingly “natural” and has excellent marketing with pretty scenes of bees, flowers and old fashioned beehives.

What then for the vegan lifestyle bloggers, who must eschew sugar but also don’t want to eat honey? Well they must turn to alternatives such as agave nectar, date syrup, maple syrup and stevia. Of course many of these are also marketed as having “health benefits” because we can’t, in the blogging world, use an ingredient that isn’t “healthy”. There are trends, fads and “aesthetics” that must be followed if you want to be seen in this sphere. You then get secondary bloggers and Instagrammers who are using those ingredients because the blogs they follow and the people they see as icons or leaders in the field. (The proliferation of faux-science blogs, “nutritionists” with little to no qualifications, and those looking for “natural remedies” as opposed to chemicals or pharmaceuticals further supports these blogs and their choices.)

Secondly the majority of blogs and websites in the English speaking world also come from the US which has a different food culture to the UK. This is important when it comes to sugar and vegans. In the UK sugar is normally produced from sugar beet which is not refined using animal products. In the US however a lot of sugar comes from sugar cane, which is usually refined using bone char (literally the ashes of animal bones) and thus makes it not a vegan product. Mindful of this US vegans look for alternative sugar sources and, since honey is also not a vegan option, may turn to other plant derived sweeteners. However, due to the influence of and crossover with health bloggers some common sweeteners such as maple syrup or corn syrup are out of favour due to them not being considered “healthy”. That means that many American vegan food bloggers are drawn to previously uncommon syrups like agave.

Again, there is a trickle down effect where people may use the same ingredients as their peers and those they look up to without really questioning the why of it. 

Take time to reflect

If we start to look at our cooking and recipes a little closer we may wonder why some of these unusual ingredients are being used. Sometimes it is merely a point of geography. Why is this food blogger using agave nectar? Is it simply as a sweetener and are they from the US? In which case we, in the UK could use our regular sugar or even golden syrup if we wanted to retain the same moisture content. If it’s for health reasons and we feel strongly about not using refined sugar then perhaps we can stick with the agave or any other acceptable sweetener.

It may be the case in some recipes that we are using agave nectar to replace honey which itself was a replacement for refined sugar. In which case, why not just use sugar?

This momentary consideration can make our cooking a lot easier. It’s certainly not limited to honey and sugar substitutes either. There are similar questions to be asked about the use of coconut oil – why not regular vegetable oil or one of the many non-dairy margarines on the market in the UK. Again the answer is either due to somebody wanting it for the specific “health” benefits or because of the availability of non-dairy alternatives in the writer’s region. (occasionally it for specific flavour or a cooking property such as it’s melting point but if that’s the case it’s normally made clear in the recipe.) 

photograph showing two wooden box beehives in a garden setting. photo credit to Tangled Bank

But this still begs the question, who are the people using so much honey that they think a vegan choosing not to use honey will have a cataclysmic effect on the bee population? Are they even aware that there are more species of bee than the honey bee?

If you are vegan, don’t worry about not using honey, but do consider what ingredient you are replacing and why. If you aren’t vegan, just relax and look at the bigger picture – it’s not always about honey.

If you like what I write consider leaving me a tip buy donating via ko-fi.com/axesnyarn

Sunday Short: Saying no to hatred

Today's Sunday short is brought to you from a Facebook post originally shared on the 10th January. 

Screen shot of a Twitter Post from user Casey Forbes (@caseyf) that reads: I deleted that Build the W*ll hat that was posted to @Ravelry. It goes in the bin along with the confederate flag patterns. I'm especially thankful for the latinx ravelers who toot the time to write me about it and I'm sorry that you had to look at that shit. The tweet is dated Jan 9 2018 from 1L35PM

This is how you do it if you are a website owner/manager/moderator or any organisation really.
You don't just have T&C that say no racist content. You stand by your policies. When somebody violates those policies, you don't look for a loophole, you don't look for an excuse, you don't play devils advocate.
You stand by your policies and principals and you take action.

In this case that means deleting a knitting pattern which supports a racist and xenophobic policy and person.

Remember this is nothing to do with free speech. This is a website owner who has said "I will not tolerate intolerance on this website". If that knitter wants to knit and wear their hat in their own time off of Ravelry, they can. But other people have every right to call them out on it. And a content manager has every right to say "you have broken our terms and conditions and we well not allow that.".

I haven't knit anything or even been on Ravelry in ages. But this is why they are awesome. Even if you don't do any sort of fibre art, there's a lot we can learn from Ravelry.